Angels Fall First
by DayStorm
Summary: How do you kill an immortal? Bind them to someone who can die. Nobody thought she'd survive the initial encounter. FBI Probationary Agent Holly Nelson was never cleared to go to New Orleans. She knew she'd be alone, understood the threat and was prepared for the consequences of that decision. Finding herself magically tied to a vampire ... yeah, no one saw that coming.
1. Chapter 1 - Clones, Bloody Clones!

_***Preacher – the story and all related characters – belong to the writers, cast and crew of the show. I claim no ownership or association to the TV series titled Preacher, based on the comic of the same name.***_

 **Chapter 1  
** **Clones, Bloody Clones!**

* * *

" _I could really go for a Mexican  
_ _taco right now."_

– **Proinsias Cassidy  
** Preacher, S02E03

* * *

From his seat in the rafters, Cassidy watched Starr's people take up positions just outside the perimeter. Twelve in all. Their white silk jackets crisp under the dusty yellow light filtering down from the high warehouse ceiling.

"Bottom line is if cattle move out of this city, I move them. Me. Not me and you," the younger of the two men sitting at the table leaned forward, scowling. "You've come far, Starr, and you think you're hot shit but you're not hot enough to take me out and I think you know that."

Herr Starr nodded, but the motion was more acknowledgement of a point made rather than agreement with it.

One hard finger stabbed the table. "Which is why you and me are going to work this out, if we have to fuckin' sit here 'til dawn."

Starr stared straight ahead, while his cloudy right eye rolled in its socket. A mask of exasperated disinterest deepening the lines on his face.

The unexpectedly close whisper of metal on metal drew Cassidy's gaze to the top of the nearest stack. A prone gunman, his sights sweeping the perimeter of the light, lay half-hidden behind a crate of no-wax vinyl flooring.

Cass pulled his lips off his teeth, enjoying the smooth slide of fangs pressing down.

Starr had the numbers, but White had the high ground.

His attention slid to the shadowed corner where a figure sat slumped – unconscious? – on a crate. Then up, almost directly above the body to where Tulip crouched. Nearly invisible so far outside the circle of light.

Her rifle glinted dully. He doubted anyone else would have caught that black shine; his eyes 'specially attuned to see in the dark. She had a clear line of sight of everyone in the room, her finger resting lightly to the side of the trigger.

She was waiting.

Below, White hissed through his teeth.

"You pompous ass."

Starr only shrugged.

Their table sat in the middle of a cleared area surrounded by forklifts. One section of the overhead lights had been switched on, but they didn't quite manage to illuminate the oil-stained floor. White's guard blended too well into the surrounding shadows.

Anonymous in the dark. Fodder.

A man dressed all in black leaned over White's shoulder, "You don't have to take this!"

It was clear that White agreed, but with a monumental effort he seemed to collect himself. "Let's hear Mr. Starr's suggestion of compromise."

Herr Starr managed a limp smile, "There will be no _'compromise'_. You are going to stop."

A manicured hand rose to cut off the protest from his enraged second, "Admittedly, trafficking is a very small part of what I do, but I do not wish to stop doing it. We appear to have reached an impasse."

Something changed.

Nothing moved, no one tensed but a current passed through the air like a charge, yanking every hair on his body erect and Cassidy stood up. Startled.

A 9-mm round from a burst of machine gun fire caught him in the shoulder.

The bullet continued straight through him, missing bone and dense muscle, to kill the man wearing white it was intended for.

A spray of blood and brain misted over cardboard boxes.

Both Starr and White rose from their table, Starr's apathy immediately igniting White's fury. He shouted, "The fuck you playin' at?!" as a silver pistol cleared the holster hidden beneath his jacket.

Hunger roared at his injury as Cassidy dropped to the floor, staggering from the searing pain. Not his first bullet hole. He shrugged off the hurt, secure in the knowledge that nothing they did to him would kill him.

Too late to pretend he wasn't there; the sniper hadn't meant to shoot _him_. He shouldn't have moved, rushing the whole thing, but he was in play now.

Cassidy vaulted over a stack of shower doors wrapped in foam, and met the cold eyes of one of White's guard. The man swung a submachine gun around.

Too slow.

He caught the man in a punishing embrace and slammed his mouth down on the exposed length of throat. Rough flesh tore under his teeth, a wash of hot blood spilling over the front of both of them.

Cassidy gulped, drinking with greedy abandon as shots pinged off the rafters over his head.

His ears were ringing. Heat slid through his body, heady and intoxicating. He sucked hard and felt the human heart immediately fail at the sudden suction. The blood stopped flowing. Crap.

A burst of fire tore through Cassidy's abdomen. Fierce pain that nearly drove him to his knees. He dropped the body in his arms.

Face and chest sodden with crimson, blood slicked his teeth and he grinned maniacally at the surrounding humans. Men and women both, each armed. All so well-trained that not one flinched away from the sight he knew he must have made.

He snarled.

They raised their guns.

He didn't see the brute looming up behind him, or the length of wood gripped in both beefy hands.

Cass heard the pop of a single silenced shot sear so close to his cheek that he felt the heat of the bullet as it sailed past.

He spun around in time to catch the ridiculous piece of wood fall from nerveless fingers, followed by two hundred pounds of meat – a hole in the man's forehead so neat it might have been put there with a drill . . .

* * *

What the hell, Cassidy.

This was _not_ the plan.

Tulip sighted down the length of her scope, the crosshairs moving over Cass' face. She saw bewilderment, quickly followed by understanding as he watched the idiot with a stake ( _really, a wooden stake?!_ ) collapse like a puppet with its strings cut.

He had the sense not to glance up and give away her position, but she caught his grin and accepted that as thanks for saving his ass. He wouldn't have _died_ , but a stake driven through his heart would have dropped him real fast . . .

She swept the rifle around, eye hovering over the lens of its scope. Searching for the dome of a shiny bald head. Starr was here. She'd had him a second ago, but dropped him to save Cassidy and now couldn't find him again.

There were too many bodies.

Too many people moving around.

Under her, Jesse lay slumped. A black bag over his head. Propped up against a rough wooden crate of something bathroom-related. She didn't know what. Didn't much care. From her vantage, she could protect him. And if she couldn't? The slim knife tucked into her boot would have her dropping straight down from the rafters to cut the throat of anyone who dared get close.

She was _not_ playing.

The air around her seemed to thrum. Like a plucked guitar string. Tulip lifted her face from the rifle, glancing uneasily back over her shoulder. Nobody stood there. Her gaze moved up, scanning the solid steel beams of the exposed rafters.

She was alone.

* * *

Both sides realized they had a common enemy at roughly the same time.

This was not the slaughter Sylvester White had planned. Crouched behind a roll of peel-and-stick flooring, he grabbed his second's shoulder and waved his custom silver-plated pistol toward the distant hanger doors.

"Let's get the fuck out of here!"

The other man nodded and they began to make their way down the aisles, back-to-back, each guarding the other's retreat.

* * *

Time seemed to slow while bloodlust roared.

Hunger clawing at the underside of Cassidy's skin. Pitiless. His wounds closed with the fresh influx of human blood, but it wasn't enough. He wanted to feel his fangs break through flesh, to gorge on the hot liquid that would spill out. It wasn't even hunger – it'd become _need_.

That need was two-fold.

It strengthened him. Power ripped through lean, hard muscle, but it also slowed him. Like a shot of adrenaline. He started to shake, growing almost clumsy but that wouldn't stop him as the salt of blood filled his head with something like euphoria. It was a feeling he'd never been able to recreate.

He thought he saw Starr duck behind a crate, closely followed by a flurry of black-coated guards and realized that White was evacuating. The Men in White were not; more bodies spilled from the shadows like ants swarming a wasp.

Herr Starr was nowhere in sight.

Tulip released another well-timed shot. Taking out two women descending on him. Her bullet cut cleanly through one skull, then exploded the second. It was something to see but the fresh bloodscent confused him more.

It wasn't just the ringing in his ears.

His vision swam.

The body in the corner slid from its crate. Boneless.

Yeah, Jesse was unconscious; he made no effort to catch himself. His friend's skull thumped on the floor.

More people. Too many for Tulip to pick them off. He sprinted fearlessly straight into the mob, human bones breaking under his vampire strength, and continued past them. Racing the flurry of gunfire itching between his shoulders.

Cassidy snarled, exalting in the chaos and ducked behind a concrete support. Not a single shot hit him. Not this time. He peeked around the side, the concrete rough under his hands, and scanned the throng.

Tulip was keeping them distracted.

He could hear the subdued crack of each shot.

Deadly efficiency, she never missed and chose her targets with a cold-blooded practicality. He took advantage to slide from his hiding place. Jesse hadn't moved, though Cass caught the rise of his shoulders that showed he was breathing.

Cass dropped to his knees beside the priest, blood-wet hands snatching at the cloth bag pulled tight over Jesse's head.

"I got you, _padre_ ," he muttered.

In the split-second it took him to yank the bag off, Cassidy's sharp eyes caught the smooth curve of a breast under a black silk blouse. The narrowness of the hands tied with ropes, twisted cruelly tight behind her back.

Her.

 _Her_ back.

Thick dark hair spilled out from under the cloth sack. Long lashes fluttering as she fought toward consciousness.

"Who the hell are _you_?"

Brown eyes met his. Glossed with incoherence.

" _ **Stop!"**_

Jesse's voice cut through the deafening cacophony of gunfire and dying screams.

Thoroughly distracted, bewildered, still riding the high of his own bloodlust, Cassidy glanced quickly back over his shoulder to see the preacher stepping into the dim circle of yellow light.

" _ **Surrender."**_

The air trembled. Like thunder only without sound. As one, the people in white silk jackets set their weapons aside. Mindlessly obedient. It was comical.

Cassidy stood up, peering across at his friend.

He heard Tulip, "Cass!" and had no time to comprehend the warning; a bald figure slid to his side. In the time it took Cassidy to recognize the threat he felt ice scald his skin. So cold that it burned straight through to his bones.

He let out a gasp, hissing through his fangs at the smooth gray cuff that closed around his wrist.

Hazel eyes met Starr's milky white as the man pointed a small handgun – not at _him_ , but at the woman lying helplessly at their feet.

"No," Jess shouted. "No, no, stop him!"

Tulip shifted on the beam above them, struggling to aim her rifle straight down. She reached for her knife.

" _ **Stop him!**_ "

The power of Jesse's Voice rolled through Cassidy's body.

Absolute command. Impossible to disobey.

Fangs flashed.

A shot fired.


	2. Chapter 2 - A Bleedin' Tasmanian Devil

_***Preacher – the story and all related characters – belong to the writers, cast and crew of the show. I claim no ownership or association to the TV series titled Preacher, based on the comic of the same name.***_

 **Chapter 2  
** **A Bleedin' Tasmanian Devil**

* * *

" _Why should I trust you?  
_ _Why should I trust a lying,  
_ _junkie vampire who thinks  
_ _everything's a joke?"_

– **Jesse Custer  
** Preacher, S02E05

* * *

The sound of blood pounding in her ears told her she was awake.

Holly Nelson came up out of the dark, scrambling desperately for information. A bad taste coated the inside of her mouth. She'd been sedated.

 _That_ she remembered clearly.

The sting of a syringe. Muscles straining against her restraints and then the fuzzy heat tingling all through her body. She'd known what was happening to her, could do nothing to resist the pull of chemical sedation.

Her mind sank; the darkness closing over her, and it felt very much like drowning. Pulled inexorably down into a crushing depth. There hadn't even been dreams. There were dreams now, though, disjointed thoughts like bursts of light.

Despite the drugs still swimming through her bloodstream, Holly woke with the presence of mind to take inventory. The first thing to register was the scent of smoke, wafts curling around her nostrils as if begging to be inhaled.

Her mouth was dry.

The foul taste coating the inside part dehydration. She'd been unconscious for a long while. Coherence returning too slowly, it was hard to pull her mind from the haze. So easy to sink back into uneasy sleep . . .

Holly let her eyes fall open, wincing at the sunlight spilling through curtains drawn against the dawn. Too bright. Her head pounded. Her stomach heaved and she turned her face away, nausea rising bitterly into her throat.

She would not be sick.

She would . . . not . . .

Holly curled her fingers into her palms, fingertips tingling like static on an old TV. A lack of circulation coupled with the damage done to her shoulders; her rotator cuffs overextended, having been forced too far back and held that way for too long.

She was supposed to be dead.

She could still feel the bite of the knife digging into her throat, that hard, swift cut that drew only a little blood. Shallow wound. It wasn't intended to hurt her, only frighten with the promise of greater pain and the burst of rage like lightening in White's glacial eyes when she held his stare.

Defiant.

Holly felt the sting of hot sweat at the memory.

When they'd slid the needle into her arm, this fuzzy warmth like cotton filling her mouth, dizziness and then nothing . . . she had been certain they were euthanizing her. Had screamed, then, and fought for all the good it did.

She had _**not**_ expected to regain consciousness.

Not ever.

Why, then, was she unbound, lying fully clothed on a bed? She wiggled her toes and felt the rub of socks on her feet. The scent of smoke curled tantalizingly, harsh in her lungs but familiar.

Tobacco.

Holly turned her upper body around, warbling gaze finding her captor. He sat on the floor, rolling a joint between deft fingers and the ease of long practice. A cigarette hanging almost daintily off his bottom lip.

He was not what she expected; not one of White's men for sure.

A rough carpet of stubble shadowed a lean jaw. Tired eyes. A thatch of dark hair, the ends spiked stiff with drying blood. His t-shirt hung off a thin frame, doing nothing to mask the hard cut of lean muscle beneath.

Blue jeans, frayed and worn as the man wearing them. He sat with his legs hiked up to fit between the bed and the wall.

A chill worked its way down the centre of her back.

He had to be a solid foot taller than her. At a _minimum_. Holly was no wilting flower – with her background and the training that background entailed, she had faith in herself. She could, could _win_ , but she'd been overpowered once already and that . . .

She'd been captured and summarily executed.

It didn't seem to matter that no, she wasn't dead. She'd _believed_ she was being killed, believed it as the needle pierced her skin. As the darkness swept over her, through her, suffocating heat and the memory of that terror had shaken her to her very core.

Now she was awake. Alive. Breathing in cigarette smoke, head pressing on a pillow that stank of old sweat and weed, she had been left with one man to guard her and it was a struggle to pull all the scattered pieces of herself together.

 _He_ reminded her of a wiry coyote, a scrapper and she . . .

. . . she would probably throw up.

Granted, projectile vomiting all over him would make for one hell of a distraction.

Holly cast a furtive look toward the only door, white paint chipped and flaking.

"Wouldn't try it if I were you, luv. If you run," he said, the words running together through an Irish accent so thick she could have poured it over coffee "we both die."

Was that a threat?

Holly held herself still, hardly daring to breathe though her chest ached to fill with air. She'd frozen at the first sound of his voice. Her eyes narrowed as the man finally glanced up. He sucked on his smoke, the end of it flaring angry red.

It was the heat, not the smell, that did her in.

Sweat needled the back of her neck, forehead, arms and legs.

Moving faster than Holly's warbling vision could process, the man dropped his joint and plucked a plastic garbage pail from the floor. He had her head shoved on top of it, all in the time it took liquid to rocket into her throat.

Head whirring with dizziness, she threw up. Too miserable to care that a stranger, her captor, possibly her murderer had her long hair clutched in a fist. Keeping the sweaty strands from falling into her own mess.

Holly heaved again, shoulders arching, fingers clenching around the side of the mattress.

"Yeah," the man muttered. "Yeah. That's a shit feeling."

Sticky tears blurring her vision, Holly lifted her face from the pail and sucked in clean air. He wasn't standing over her, but crouched unsteadily down at her level. She met a pair of hazel eyes narrowed in what might have been sympathy.

Might have been a lot of things.

A shiver of sick rolled up her spine and Holly clutched the side of the mattress.

Everything seemed like it was moving. The pitch and sway of the bed beneath her. Night table. Dresser pushed up against one wall. Narrow window and the buttery yellow rays of the rising sun defused through the curtain.

 _Pull yourself together,_ she thought numbly, the voice in her head sounding suspiciously like that of her instructor back at Quantico, _You're not helpless. Look around. What d'you have?_

Her stomach gurgled.

The man lifted the pail again.

Holly's shaking fingers closed over cool ceramic. A bulbous lamp plugged into the wall at the head of the bed. She caught it up in one hand, the awkward weight slipping, and slammed it into the man's skull.

He yelped like a struck puppy, the sound almost comical given the situation. Her stomach gave another dangerous lurch but Holly was already off the bed. Shaking, weak, sweating. Door! Where was the door!?

She heard the man topple into the window, the clatter of a curtain rod pulled off the wall. Clear morning light spilled into the room. The man cried out again; real panic this time and pain.

Holly plowed dizzily into the bedroom wall, trembling fingers sliding off the doorframe. Down, lower, to the cool brass of a dented knob. She twisted hard, heart pounding as she braced to feel the cut of hard fingers on her shoulders.

Nobody touched her.

She yanked the door open, nearly swinging herself back into the room. Ahead of her, a dimly lit corridor. Behind? She cast a single frantic look back and saw the man wrapping himself up in the collapsed curtains.

What?

Holly stumbled from the bedroom.

"Wait! No, wait, come back!"

The man's voice chased after her.

One foot in front of the other . . . it shouldn't have been this hard but Holly could barely get her trembling body to cooperate. She felt cold. She felt hot. Feverish. Her gaze swung, training having conditioned her to check doorways while the dizziness had her crashing into them instead.

A chipped and peeling bathroom to her right. Door open. Empty. She nearly pitched inside, both hands reaching to steady herself on the wall and . . . missing . . .

Dark metal glinted, stark against her brown skin.

Surprising enough that it stopped her. A pattern of whorls and what looked like twigs etched into the icy metal of the slim gray cuff.

Hand clutching a doorframe, knees threatening to buckle, Holly lifted her other arm to check for its double – her first thought having been that this was some sort of shackle – but there was none. The bracelet clamped around her wrist, tight enough so that she couldn't slip it off, could have been a handcuff only there didn't seem to be any way to open it.

There was another bedroom. Not empty; a woman lay on her stomach on the bed, paging through a magazine. Tight black jeans hugging an equally tight ass, hair cropped short. Pretty face under a bruise browning high on her cheek.

Holly met the woman's cool stare, holding it just long enough to send a fresh surge of panic through her.

 _A brothel._

That's what White had done; delivered her to a brothel. Left with a guard but not tied down and that chilled her to her core. There would be no reason to restrain her, if there was nowhere to go. The woman swung her legs off the side of the bed, coming for her –

Holly slammed the bedroom door closed. To hell with that. The apartment wasn't large and it was a straight shot down one dimly lit hall to freedom; she could see it. A _front door_. She felt sick down to her bones but couldn't stop the forward momentum. Not now when she was so close . . .

He caught her just as she burst into the kitchen. Two strong arms closed around her midsection.

She screamed and without thinking that she should, even remembering that she _could_ , Holly cracked her head sharply backward, the back of her skull connecting with the man's face. She heard the crunch of cartilage. The shout of surprised pain, quickly followed by a string of cusses too heavy for her to make out.

More importantly, Holly felt the iron bands around her waist loosen.

She turned in his arms, not attempting to pull free and brought her knee up.

Anticipating her maneuver, the man twisted his hips and she missed his groin by a mile but that was fine. She hadn't been aiming for it. Instead her knee drove solidly into his kidney and the man _oof_ -ed! She followed through with the palm of her cuffed right hand, driving it into the mess of meaty blood that used to be a nose.

Or she tried to.

He used his body. The entire length of him pressed to hers, forcing Holly back into the sharp side of a refrigerator with enough force that the heavy appliance rocked under her. He caught her flailing wrists.

"Aye! Enough. Gah, you're like the bleedin' Tasmanian Devil."

His eyes were hazel brown, flecked with blue and green, his face pressed too close to her own. Holly held his gaze. Trembling. This near to him, she could smell the blood leaking from his nose. Feel his breath hot on her skin.

The man had the lacy, off-white curtain from the bedroom wrapped around his head like a shawl. Tassel ends falling over his forehead down to his brows. He looked ridiculous. Out of her peripheral she saw movement.

It was the woman from the room, sauntering down the hall.

"What the hell, Cassidy. Leave you alone for ten minutes an' she beats the crap out of you."

The woman sounded more entertained than concerned. The man – Cassidy – turned his face away to respond, a slight frown creasing between his brows –

– Holly lifted her feet off the floor, surrendering her weight to her captor.

His grip on her wrists tightened reflexively and she drove the heel of one foot into his knee, feeling that leg buckle while her other foot slammed back down on the ground. Holding herself upright in the second it took for Cassidy to collapse.

* * *

The girl dropped him like a goddamn navy seal.

Cassidy pulled himself off the floor, ears ringing, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. She was fast, fierce, a wildcat . . .

. . . and she had training.

The kind that didn't come from some strip mall dojo.

Tulip vaulted over the chair thrown down in front of her and charged after the fleeing woman to drag her ass back. Not to the apartment, but to _him_.

Scared, she ran from them, but she didn't understand.

She was going to die.

* * *

The rush of blood in Holly's head thickened.

She made it out into the hall, upending a chair to stumble the woman who gave chase but that wouldn't stop her and the corridor outside confirmed Holly's suspicion that she was in a building.

Yellow light lanced through an opening at the very end of the hall. Sunlight. Was that sunlight? It had to be because if not, she was dead. Holly moved quickly, numbered doors blurring in her peripheral and managed a short distance before pain tore up her arm with such ferocity she thought the flesh must have been shredded into ribbon.

A flurry of spots danced across her vision as Holly careened first off a wall, then into a doorway. The cool metal of the hoop locked around her wrist grew hot. Hotter. Scalding where it pressed into her skin and yet she felt that distantly.

The bloody, meaty thickness – like pressure building inside her skull – moved from her head to her chest. Her heart. Oh, god, her heart seemed to swell inside her. The weight of it incredible, beating. Beating. She was having a heart attack.

At twenty-three?

Yes.


End file.
